mile. A couple passing me does a double take before herding their children quickly away, the wife checking twice over her shoulder. Families cycle by lazily, trailing babies in covered Burleys, and the morning dog-park crowd congregates on a corner, engrossed in observing their pets’ antics and picking up their pets’ leavings, hurrying on after they get a good look at me.
They aren’t used to seeing the imperfect, not here, not anymore.
What I want most right now is a number. I’ve learned to hate numbers, but I want three digits plus three digits plus four digits. The public hot spot where I’m parked must be weak, not even one bar, so I drive the Acura up several blocks, stay long enough to find the Post’s confidential tips page, download the Signal app, and send a hopeless message asking for Bonita Hamilton or Jay Jackson. Then I cut off the Wi-Fi on Malcolm’s computer before he can track me, and I return to K Street.
And I wait, curled up in the backseat, with the blanket that’s protected the trunk from plants and mulch and topsoil wrapped around me like a shroud.
I dream about all the things. Freddie as a baby and a girl and a woman. Girls in blue skirts and white blouses, not knowing what they hate or why. Qs with their long, curly tentacles, reaching out for a new victim. I dream in the present and the future and the past, jumbled images of love and hate and peace and war. I dream of my body going quiet, resting. I am an object at rest.
I don’t know how long I’ve waited. I don’t know whether I’ve slept or whether I’ve dreamed of sleep, and when the sound of an angry fist on the window over my head bangs again, I shrink, trying to become smaller, trying to become invisible.
A voice, filtered and fuzzy, calls my name once, then speaks slowly.
“I am Bonita Hamilton. You called me.”
Go away.
Mother Voice drowns me out. Even she sounds defeated right now, but she answers. Her fingers find the edges of the shroud and she unveils me. When I open my eyes, a face, framed by two hands to shield the sun, is pressed against the window.
SEVENTY-TWO
Hospital.
I hear the word “hospital.” It sounds like a place I’d like to go.
But I have work to do first.
Bonita has her phone in one hand, and my wrist in the other, the pressure of two fingers hard against my veins. I hear words, questions, a female voice counting. And another voice, maybe my own, saying laptop, password, pen, calling for Freddie. Someone asks me who the president is. I think I say Malcolm. Right now, I can’t think of anyone else who has that much power.
I’m on a bed, or a sofa, a softness that I want to sink into and let absorb me. My limbs are so heavy, so tired, and there’s pain. Each move, even the smallest twist of my neck or the flex of my fingers as I point to the stolen laptop, requires superhuman force. I close my eyes to the lights above me, and even that hurts. It should not hurt to close my eyes.
Someone says, “Four hundred photos. Jesus.”
Someone says, “I can’t believe this shit.”
Someone says, “Call the Kansas City office.”
A hand rests on my cheek, cool and dry until it absorbs some of the heat I seem to be putting out. “Honey? You still with me? Elena? If you can hear me, I’m Bonita Hamilton, and that’s Jay Jackson over at the desk. I’ve called for help, and you’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Thank you,” I say, slurring the two syllables.
“No, honey. Thank you.”
And then all the someones, in a chorus, say, “Where’s the goddamned ambulance?”
Mother Voice tells me it’s okay to go to sleep.
SEVENTY-THREE
My mother is here. And other shapes. A bright light, blinding in its whiteness, shines into my right eye and then my left. I sense it without seeing it, that whiteness. It’s no more a thing than the needle under the skin of